Featured Reviews

Highest Rated

1 of 52 of 53 of 54 of 55 of 5

The standard orentaion is wrong ... the use of ambugious terms like width which should be X instead is y ... and length is used for X it should be y. Sorry to say this is not a professional engineering platform or any other. Please lets have a discussion about this.. the standard view 3/4 is also wrong ... 0,0,0 should be at the lower left hand of the frount face... Its arguable everything is ... however the view should be from the objects point of view not a god/creater view when you work on the left hand side of the object its the left hand side of the object the not god's left hand side... Thus in the program you have the left side of the object the left side of god and the right side of the object being the right side of god. I am classically trained and worked in aerospace eng. ... Computer Vision, AutoCAD, Have done a lot of "CAD" programing... Rhino makes the same mistake.. POVRAY uses the left hand rule with Yup.... at least FreeCAD is correct in using the right hand rule Zup ... because of the mix up with X pointing out of the screen the standard reference lighting is comming from over the left hand shoulder and it should be the right hand shoulder... all of this is easy to fix.... IF fixed I have an open source CAD text book that could be used for FreeCAD training ... I also own the GNUCAD name... and would be willing to work with you... I have access to Volumetric Cad modules that could be intergrated... sorry for bad grammer or misspellings.. don't have the time to clean this up... carl at Common Good Public License dot org..

carlvilbrandtvs

Lowest Rated

1 of 52 of 53 of 54 of 55 of 5

Promising. But at this point on my Mac only promising. As the old adage said: "If it sounds too good to be true, that in fact is probably the case!"
Best of Luck.

User Reviews

It is a complex interface and using rules (example a form must be attach to the prévious form. what ever which parent you chose to create the new form.
It is not a problem when you know, thanks to the communoty because it writen nowhere.
Until now I do not succeed to make drawing for the work shop with cotation.
Rockn says about FreeCàD "Mais vous savez que le futur c'est maintenant" I hope not, the 2D CAD where a lot more intuitive.

Posted 03/18/2015

rsfz

1 of 52 of 53 of 54 of 55 of 5

It's decent in some areas, but full of bugs and with a horrendous interface design and lack of options. It really needs a lot of improvement to avoid being the frustrating piece of software it is.

FreeCAD is a powerful open source (LGPL license) parametric 3D CAD program. It is still under development, and version 0.14 was recently released.
FreeCAD has an active web forum too. See the Users Showcase area to see some of what has been done with FreeCAD. There are also forum areas for those people who may have trouble installing FreeCAD, and another area for people who need help using FreeCAD.
I have some YouTube video tutorials under the user name bejant000 that are intended to help new users learn FreeCAD to make 3D models.
I've been using FreeCAD for just over a year (so yeah, I'm biased) and thought I'd post this info to help new FreeCAD users.

Posted 07/22/2014

vicoliang

1 of 52 of 53 of 54 of 55 of 5

FreeCad is very good. There is another free CAD project: sourceforge.net/projects/cadplatform/

Posted 05/12/2014

danielutzkie

1 of 52 of 53 of 54 of 55 of 5

I've downloaded and installed FreeCad on a Windows 8 Platform but I am unable to open the program to start using it.
Can you please help

Posted 04/23/2014

alexuspol

1 of 52 of 53 of 54 of 55 of 5

Experiece from commercial CAD or not? It is just a matter about the way you are used to work. Once I got the hang on how to use FreeCAD it was really usefull to me. People praise Solidworks and Autodesk products simply because they are expected to be good, and people take the time and learn how to use them. CATIA would provide even more possibilities if you learn how to use it. At the end, the young and hungry generation might learn how to work in FreeCAD at start, then competing tools will not be as appealing at first glance. I really urge experienced CAD users to take the time to truly learn FreeCAD before giving up. Also for an opensource tool it must be easy to get started for a novice, because no one will pay for expensive education if you haven't spent a fortune on the software license. So I strongly agree with the concept of having an intuitive user interface, but I won't argue that FreeCAD can evolve even further, I really hope it does...

Posted 01/16/2014

davidwishengrad

1 of 52 of 53 of 54 of 55 of 5

FreeCAD rocks!!!!
The people complaining should realize that if they don't know what they are looking at they really shouldn't comment. I've yet to have it even work properly on my 64 bit windows system to get moving with it, a graphics issue, but I can see the API started, showing an entry point, Python being used, examples, and the transformation matrices are right there to be had!!! You might not understand what this is very important for, but I do!!! I'm going to give it a go. If I can help I will. I can't thank the people who have put this together enough. All those 'features' that people are asking for can be added by them for the most part. The important work is not only decent, but available where other CAD softwares will hide that functionality to control usage and sales. It's finally time to write some Python for me. I like the idea that I may be able to write something that works for someone else and then them not getting taken advantage of by the OS and CAD companies afterwards. I can't think clearly when I code if I can clearly see that what I develop will be used as a tool to take advantage of the people that I am trying to help in the first place. Kudo's to the crew regardless. You have done a great job already.

Posted 01/03/2014

mattbatten

1 of 52 of 53 of 54 of 55 of 5

I've been using it for a few weeks now. It started out promising and I was able to make some good models for 3D printing. Then I hit a wall trying to do boolean operations. Apparently the OpenCasCade library that FreeCAD uses for booleans is not too robust. The end result is that I can't get the results I want which ultimately makes this a dead end for me. I'll keep using it for basic work, but I would never promote this to my peers/colleagues as a tool that gets real work done. I'll change my review when I can get consistent/quality results from boolean ops.

Posted 01/02/2014

redsalamander

1 of 52 of 53 of 54 of 55 of 5

I have been trying to lean CAD for a long time. Apart from not being able to afford AutoCAD I have tried the Demo version and by the end of it I'd be lucky if I could draw a cube. I have been using FreeCAD for a little over a year now to draw mainly things that I need to visualise, till this my only option was a sheet of paper and a No2 Pencil if I was lucky I'd have a ruler handy. FreeCAD falls in with my mindset 100% its not over complicated there are very nice tutorials to get you drawing and the only things I could think of to improve would be screw threads I have drawn some but they are hollow and 3D printers don't like that. Gears would be nice and maybe a way to curve an object EG curve a cone into a something like a horn shape for an air duct.
Now If you are a CAD designer with "real" CAD experience you will be falling of your chair laughing at the fact that I don't know some technical term for what I asked, but that's who this is aimed at.
At the end of the day I have used FreeCAD to design many really cool things if you would like an example I have shared a few on thingyverse search for my username redsalamander all of it's done in FreeCAD. It simply works for me and my feeling is until they find something that can draw what I'm thinking this will do very nicely thank you.

Posted 09/07/2013

viattonbelksam

1 of 52 of 53 of 54 of 55 of 5

Cool app, works great!

Posted 07/29/2013

notaduck

1 of 52 of 53 of 54 of 55 of 5

600 5 star ratings <-- haven't used a professional parametric 3D cad program.
150 1 star ratings <-- have used a professional parametric 3D cad program.
A shovel is a godsend if you were digging with your bare hands.
It kind of sucks if you had an excavator.
FreeCAD is nowhere near professional 3D cad software such as Solidworks or Autodesk Inventor, which cost thousands of dollars/euros. Features are sparse, ui is clumsy. But it's free.
I tried to give this 2/5, but I honestly cannot. For I have used professional 3D cad software.

Posted 07/20/2013

dustinsmith08

1 of 52 of 53 of 54 of 55 of 5

Cool program - but the interface is terrible. It requires a tutorial just to find basic tools - and the measurement tool does not show unit type, so when I imported a file and finally found the measurement tool is just told me it was 664 long.

Posted 07/19/2013

hans1960

1 of 52 of 53 of 54 of 55 of 5

I discontinued Autocad and tried Freecad do continue drawing my house in 3D.
I tried to move objects and extrude planes, and create walls... nothing was possible??
When I click a plane I can not extrude it.. the extrude button stays grayed out???
I have tried all kind of options for 20 minutes. Nothing works.
Maybe this program actually is capable of doing anything, but the user interface makes it impossible to use.
I am happy to teach the programmers how to make it user friendly.
Terrible software. I can not use it.

Posted 07/09/2013

calc4fem

1 of 52 of 53 of 54 of 55 of 5

Freecad is nice program and it is getting better with every new version. I use it with CalculiX (calculixforwin.com) for FEA analysis with commercial programs

Posted 06/22/2013

ltking

1 of 52 of 53 of 54 of 55 of 5

Promising. But at this point on my Mac only promising. As the old adage said: "If it sounds too good to be true, that in fact is probably the case!"
Best of Luck.

Posted 06/20/2013

hanpari

1 of 52 of 53 of 54 of 55 of 5

Really promising piece of software. But be sure to check version ... Right now it is about 0.something. This means there is a long way to go before it is finished. The software might seem unmature because it is not finished, not bacause it is bad or unusable. Just bear this in mind and you wont be disappointed.

Unbelievable. Easy to use, latest technology. Real 3D solids, not just drawn as meshes. But supports meshes, too and 2D drafting. Right hand coordinate system. 3D viewer without constraints works as expected. Try that with over-hyped sketchup! Would recommend to anyone.